Ghostbusters Wiki:Beginners Summary of the Ghostbusters Franchise

The Ghostbusters Franchise has been around for over 25 years, and is all based on the first movie that was in theaters in the summer of 1984. There have been many major canon items over the years, and with that comes this page.

Note: This page is meant for people new to the Ghostbusters Franchise.

A screen cap of the No-Ghost Logo

Contents

The franchise launched with Ghostbusters, which was released on June 8, 1984 and was written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film is notable for many famous jokes and scenes including Peter Venkman being slimed by a flying green ghost later known as Slimer in the animated series. Among the many highlights of the movie is Bill Murray's acting, which was top-notch and contained a lot of ad-libbed lines. The film's main antagonist was the powerful entity known as Gozer (a.k.a "The Destructor", "Volgus Zildrohar" and "The Traveller"), who eventually took the form of a 100ft tall Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, thanks to Ray Stanz's "nice thinking". The Theme Song, written and performed by Ray Parker Jr., which features the classic lyrics "Who you gonna call?" / "Ghostbusters!" also went on to become just as well-known and iconic as the film itself.

Later known as Slimer! and The Real Ghostbusters, this was an animated series that ran for 6 years from 1986-1991. Using the characters and locations from the two feature-films, 140 episodes were made before it was cancelled. The show developed and built-on many of the aspects and concepts from the films, including giving the green-ghost the name "Slimer". Notably, the four ghostbusters wore different colored uniforms and were altered in appearance to make the characters more appealing and also to avoid infringement of image rights.

The second movie was released on June 16, 1989 and was set 5 years after the events of the first film. It disregarded most of the animated series canon but included Slimer as he was popular with the fans.

The antagonist of the film is Vigo The Carpathian, who was a 16th century tyrant and magician. His spirit entered (or was captured within) a large painting of him, where it lay dormant until such time it could rise again. Using Psychomagnotheric Slime ("Mood-Slime") as a source of power, Vigo plans to transfer his soul into an infant, thus being "born again" and thus resume his reign of terror. A major scene of note was the animation of the Statue of Liberty using positively-charged mood-slime by the Ghostbusters to re-kindle the positive feelings of New York and thus weaken Vigo and his defences.

The second major animated series which was a sequel to the Real Ghostbuster and came to air in 1997. It had a one season run. It has the return of Egon, Janine, and Slimer. The show also introduces the following new team of ghostbusters; Kylie Griffin, Eduardo Rivera, Garrett Miller, and Roland Jackson. The show also had revamped equipment and noted changes in looks of the Ecto-1 and Firehouse. The show also for whatever reason didn't bring up much about the films and seemed to be a direct sequel to The Real Ghostbusters.

The video game is viewed as canon and was released in the summer of 2009. The plot takes place in 1991 and is part of the movie canon and doesn't use content from either animated shows, except for Slimer. The game focuses on explaining many things that were unanswered in the films, and included upgrades for the proton pack which the player (the Rookie) would use. The voice acting for the game is done by the actors of the films.